Biden dreams of being the new Roosevelt. He’ll have 100 days do it

With Covid raging unchecked and an obstructive Republican Senate, the president-elect has several urgent challenges.

Presidents make foreign policy, and Joe Biden will push the reset button on the Trump years with immediate effect. Picture: AFP

Joe Biden could hear Donald Trump supporters chanting “Stop the steal” beyond the perimeter as he stepped into the White House as the 46th US president. Let them deny reality all they liked, he reflected. Even Trump, the one-term loser, had turned up, scowling, to Biden’s inauguration, after leaving everybody guessing about his intentions for weeks. Hillary Clinton was there too, with her husband, Bill, wondering what might have been.

No more playing second fiddle to Barack Obama either. Nearly 50 years after being sworn in as one of America’s youngest senators, middle-class Joe from Scranton, Pennsylvania, was now Mr President. The Oval Office was his, along with the marine in crisp white uniform stationed outside the door. The bright gold curtains, a brash reminder of Trump’s four years in power, would have to go, Biden mused, as well as the painting of Andrew Jackson, the populist 19th-century president to whom Trump liked to compare himself.

Is this how it will be in the heady few hours after Biden’s inauguration on January 20, as he sets out on his first 100 days in power — when reality hits home for every new American leader?

Biden could well replace Jackson’s image with a portrait of Franklin Delano Roosevelt — FDR — the Democratic president whose triumph over personal suffering in the form of polio and bold record of reform had inspired him on the campaign trail. In his Thanksgiving address last week, the president-elect said: “Looking back over our history, you see that it’s been in the most difficult circumstances that the soul of our nation has been forged.”

Roosevelt tackled the Great Depression with gusto, enacting a series of laws fixing the banks, relieving poverty and putting Americans back to work in his first 100 days of office. Biden faces his own daunting challenges, with a soaring number of COVID-19 cases, looming personal and corporate bankruptcies and 11 million unemployed. Unlike his hero, he must deal with a hostile, divided congress and a seething former president who has managed to convince an astonishing number of followers that “Sleepy Joe” must have cheated his way to power.

Michael Beschloss, one of America’s foremost presidential historians, once said that every president “hated” being measured by the “almost unreal standard” set by Roosevelt in those first 100 days. Yet Biden became vice-president in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and prides himself on having helped to pull America out of the Great Recession. He is convinced he can do so again.

When he’s not playing golf, Donald Trump, left, fears Joe Biden might score some easy wins in his first 100 days off the back of the US President’s own self-proclaimed achievements. Picture: AFP

Will Biden succeed in ushering in the “Roaring Twenties” as the American economy emerges from the grim shadow of the pandemic? Will he preside over the “third” Obama administration, which began in hope but ended in a populist backlash at home and frustration abroad? Or will he be stymied from the start by hyper-partisanship from Republicans on his right and progressives on his left?

As he gnaws over his defeat, a jealous Trump fears Biden might score some easy wins in his first 100 days off the back of Trump’s own self-proclaimed achievements. The President is convinced Big Pharma set out to defeat him by withholding news of a coronavirus vaccine until after the election.

On Tuesday, Trump turned up at an impromptu White House press conference for just one minute to “congratulate everybody” on the rise in the stock market. The Dow Jones industrial average “just hit 30,000, which is the highest in history. We’ve never broken 30,000 and that’s despite everything that’s taken place with the pandemic”.

He then left to grant a “full pardon” to a Thanksgiving turkey named Corn — as well as sparing another bird named Cob — before doing the same the next day for General Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser. “I know you will now have a truly fantastic Thanksgiving,” Trump tweeted.

Flynn had claimed he was set up by the FBI since originally pleading guilty to lying about his contacts with the Russian ambassador in 2016. Other Trump associates caught in the Russia “hoax” are likely to be pardoned, as well as a handful of prisoners serving unjustly high sentences for minor offences, thanks to Kim Kardashian’s campaigning.

Will Trump pardon himself in advance — for everything? That is a legal minefield, but Biden will be in no hurry to set the justice department on his predecessor. At 78, facing the likelihood of just one term, he has more urgent priorities for his first 100 days in office.

the pandemic

Within two days of winning the election, Biden set up a coronavirus taskforce. “It’s Covid 24/7 now. That’s got to be dealt with,” said Donald Berwick, the former head of Medicare under Obama. Daily infections topped more than 200,000 for the first time after Thanksgiving, and the average number of deaths per day soared past 1,500. At least 264,000 people have now died and there have been over 13 million cases, meaning the US far surpasses any other country on both counts. Biden announced last week that his team was in discussions with COVID-19 officials in the White House about how to “get from a vaccine being distributed to a person being able to get vaccinated”. There will be more money for protective equipment, improved test and tracing, and a “national pandemic dashboard” displaying regional transmission rates.

In keeping with plans to follow “the science”, Dr Anthony Fauci, America’s leading infectious diseases experts, has said he would “seriously consider” an enhanced role in Biden’s team. America will also rejoin the World Health Organisation on “day one”. Biden will urge all Americans to follow his example and wear a mask, but is resisting calls for a national lockdown — the health of the US economy is too important.

The economy

Tackling the pandemic and rescuing the economy go hand in hand. Contrary to Trump’s views, last week’s stock market high owed much to Biden’s upcoming nomination of Janet Yellen, the former chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, as Treasury secretary, as well as encouraging news of a coronavirus vaccine. But JP Morgan has predicted a downturn in the first quarter of next year, when there is expected to be a wave of bankruptcies.

Last week’s stock market high owed much to Biden’s upcoming nomination of Janet Yellen as US Treasury secretary. Picture: AFP

Biden has said his first task is getting Americans back to work, keeping “people afloat”, rescuing struggling “mom and pop” businesses, and providing “immediate” assistance to state and local governments. He wants to raise the minimum wage to $US15 ($20) an hour and has promised a “Made in America” plan offering a $US400bn boost to US manufacturing, with a further $US300bn for technological research and development.

The problem is that — unless the Democrats win the two Senate run-offs in Georgia in January — he lacks a majority in congress. COVID-19 relief measures expire on December 31, and Republicans are holding out against the Democrats’ promised $US2.4 trillion relief package. “This is more than a financial crisis,” Biden said last week. “It is a crisis that is causing real mental stress to millions.”

If he cannot get a sweeping stimulus bill through congress on taking office, Biden will use executive orders to offer a moratorium on evictions and home foreclosures, and defer the payment of some payroll taxes and student loans in the hope of avoiding a double-dip recession.

The good news, according to Yellen, is the US economy is ripe for a rebound. She recently said there was a “glut of savings and a shortage of investment” but that “fiscal policy, structural policy” was needed “other than just relying on central banks to achieve healthy growth”.

Immigration and race

In the second presidential debate, Biden displayed a flash of anger with Trump for separating children from parents who crossed into America. More than 500 still do not know where their parents are. “Those kids are alone. Nowhere to go ... That’s criminal,” Biden said.

He has promised to create a federal taskforce to reunite families and there will be a 100-day freeze on deportations of illegal immigrants, apart from those with criminal convictions. He will also sign an immediate executive order overturning Trump’s entry ban on travellers from mainly Muslim countries.

“Dreamers” — the children born to undocumented parents — will finally have their status resolved. “All of those so-called Dreamers ... are going to be immediately certified again to be able to stay in this country,” Biden said.

Last week he picked the first immigrant and Latino, Alejandro Mayorkas, to run the Department of Homeland Security. But Biden’s promise to send an immigration bill to the Senate in his first 100 days, with “a pathway to citizenship for over 11 million undocumented people”, is likely to be obstructed by congress.

At home, in recognition of the outrage caused by the death of George Floyd and the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement, a national police oversight commission will be established and $US300m invested in community policing. The proposal by Kamala Harris, the vice-president-elect, for a “racial and ethnic disparities” taskforce to look into the impact of COVID-19 will also be implemented. To the fury of the left, however, there will be no encouragement to “defund” the police.

The environment

The appointment of the veteran politician John Kerry as climate tsar with cabinet status will put climate change “on the agenda in the situation room”, said Biden. On “day one”, the administration will commit to rejoining the Paris agreement, which Kerry negotiated on behalf of America, in 2015. During the campaign, Biden tried not to alienate voters in Rust Belt states over subjects such as fracking but he promised to spend $US2 trillion on transitioning to clean energy.

In tandem with his plans for boosting the economy, Biden intends to invest in green jobs in transport, environmentally friendly housing and sustainable, renewable energy. But despite the cries of urgency from climate activists, achieving “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050 is more of an ambition than a promise.

Foreign policy

Antony Blinken. Picture: AFP

Presidents make foreign policy, and Biden will push the reset button on the Trump years with immediate effect. A writer in the Atlantic magazine claimed his new foreign policy team, led by the former Obama veteran Antony Blinken as secretary of state, was as exciting as a “warm cup of Ovaltine”. It is fair to say that Team Obama left the stage in 2016 with Islamic State rampant and a refugee crisis swollen by chaos in Syria and Libya. But the swift resurgence of international diplomacy will represent a welcome return to “normalcy” for many US allies.

The former diplomat Kori Schake, now at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, said: “The Biden administration won’t just be an extension of the Obama era because the problems have changed significantly.”

She describes Biden’s foreign policy approach as similar to that of the multilateralist George Bush Sr, the president during the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Gulf War.

Plans will be laid for a global democracy summit in Biden’s first year in office, there will be attempts to negotiate a new arms control treaty with Russia and to compete with China economically by joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership. There will also be moves for negotiations on a non-nuclear Iran. As Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Biden’s new UN ambassador, said last week: “Diplomacy is back.”

A divided nation

In his memoir A Promised Land, Obama writes of his first period in office back in 2009: “Just one thing was missing: Republican support.” That is not going to change under Biden. Polarisation has increased during the Trump era. Leftwingers such as Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez are already kicking against some of Biden’s planned appointments, such as Bruce Reed, accused of being a “deficit hawk”, at the Office of Management and Budget. Notably, the expected nomination of Michele Flournoy as the first female Pentagon chief has drawn criticism of her ties to the defence industry.

Biden has a good excuse for seeing off left-wing protests — his lack of a Senate majority. Yet Republican opposition will prevent him from delivering many of his own promises unless the Democrats triumph in the 2022 midterm elections. So far, Biden is not even being granted the courtesy of a honeymoon period.

The Sunday Times